


Finding a Job in New York

by Chaerring



Series: Chance Meetings [3]
Category: Captain America (2011), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Darcy POV, Darcy works in a club, F/M, Gen, Steve's foot meets his mouth, Tony is spontaneous and conniving, the masses want Captain America
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 02:26:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/438115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaerring/pseuds/Chaerring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy finds out about aliens attacking New York a week after it happened and she only finds out then because she decided to end her world traveling after the islands Bruce recommended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Don't own and all that lovely stuff.
> 
> Thank you to TheGreatSporkWielder for putting up with me and and my incoherent after one am deliveries.

When Darcy was one hundred percent positive she had ruined her tongue for seasoning in America and was using at least three words at all times to differentiate between variations of orange in her mind (Carrot-y Macaroni Sunrise was her favorite), she decided it was time to leave India. Unfortunately, she still hadn't found herself or even forced herself to focus on what she could end up doing with her life. She was half considering traveling the world like she had been forever, but at the same time she didn't want to stay away from her family or America forever. As problem filled and directionless as her life at home was, it was her life, and running around the globe forever wasn't going to change that. Her life would then simply be running around the world avoiding things.

 

Maybe _that_ was the advice her grandmother had suggested she get away to learn; that she couldn't run from her problems forever. Darcy wasn't sure about that, though, and while she was felt like she was approaching a point where she could go home, she wasn't at that point yet. So, she looked for a place to travel to next, and decided to take Bruce's journey backwards, at least for a little while. Some of the things he had told her about the island in Oceania sounded beautiful and she wanted to witness them herself. She'd take a picture and make him a copy if she ever saw him again. 

 

For as tipsy as she was at the beginning of that night, and as giddy and infatuated as she was when she woke up the next morning, she remembered an awful lot of what Bruce said and did. She didn't even have his last name, but she knew he still liked cold southern sweet tea the best out of all the foreign ones he had tried, and it was one of the material things he missed the most about America. She knew he had let her borrow his jacket and use his thigh as a pillow without ever trying to press for anything more than the kisses she had offered him in the first place.

 

Darcy took remembering the entire night and loving the islands he had given her his circled, beaten map of as sign that she hadn't made the wrong decision in conditionally engaging herself to him.

 

Unfortunately, the islands Bruce had directed her to were just about as far off the technological trail as you could go without becoming a complete native, which meant she didn't hear about the alien attack on New York until she decided to go home and was traveling through a New Zealand airport. She spent the last of her international calling card minutes trying to get a hold of Erik and Jane to see if they were okay and to find out if Thor was still hanging around. If she was honest with herself, she was kind of hoping Thor would reintroduce her to the Hulk because he was pretty awesome and Darcy wanted to see if things had been working out better for him since she met him in New Mexico, but that seemed like a far-fetched wish.

 

She started getting worried when she didn't have any messages anywhere from Jane or Erik by the time she made it back to her grandmother's ranch. Her dad was already there visiting his mother so she stayed only long enough to make herself seem like a reasonable looking American again and relate her travels to her small family before she took off for New York. She kept trying to get a hold of her old bosses. They might have dropped her like a hot potato, but discovering aliens together was a big deal, and she cared just little about their well being. She didn't want them to be dead.

 

It was easy to get volunteer work in the New York. There was still a lot of rebuilding to do and even a little bit of clean up left from the attacks. Darcy tried to do her part and was granted space in the temporary lodgings they'd set up for out of town volunteers. It was an enormous tent with a bunch of cots, but she'd rested on worse not too long ago. She kept her taser in her hand while she slept, anyway. 

 

As easy as it was to get volunteer work, it was even easier to get residents or tourists that had been visiting to talk about what had gone down during the attack. Darcy quickly came to the conclusion that the aliens were fucking idiots. They might have actually won if they had attacked more than one city, like in Independence Day. She doubted any of the other major cities in the world had such awesome superheroes looking out for it. 

 

Darcy would have thought that New York would have a mass exodus after all the strange activity it had been getting. There were those four astronauts that had been in some sort of accident and gotten powers, and Spiderman had been around for a few years, because Darcy had googled the shit out of him at a late night debate club get together once. Their entire practice session had devolved into: _Is Spiderman a hero or a villain?_ It had been the best practice session ever. Then there were the Avengers themselves and the giant army of weirdly tech-sentient aliens they had just fought on all levels of New York. It was hard sometimes to sort through what was real and what wasn't in people’s stories, whether they were exaggerating or simply confused, she didn't know, but based on her previous encounter with Thor she was pretty sure she could figure out what actually mattered.

 

The strangeness seemed to just be something New Yorkers took in stride because for every business that shut down another was trying to rise in its spot. For every business the aliens had reduced to rubble and whose owners had left New York, a shiny new building with unfamiliar signs popped up in its place. To Darcy's extreme misfortune, all those rising new shops and businesses meant clean up was done and her temporary lodgings were being packed away by the city. She had two days to find an apartment and get a _paying_ job that could help her keep it and feed herself. 

 

She tried to clean herself up the best that she could with the clothes and slim pickings of beauty supplies she had on hand before she went to apply at most of those new businesses and some others that had wanted signs in their windows. Darcy quickly discovered exactly how little a woman could do with a political science degree and extensive traveling expertise, but no "real world" working experience. It frustrated her to no end that the only offer she had been given was to work as a waitress in a new 30s and 40s vintage club. She bet they were trying to lure in Captain America, or at least the people who thought some place like that would lure in the Captain. She hadn't even tried to apply there. Someone had simply seen her from an upstairs window as she walked by and another person had run out into the street and begged her to try on one of their waitressing uniforms.

 

It had fit perfectly. They immediately offered her a job with a check every two weeks, and full reassurances that she could wait any Avengers tables that came in, as well as agreeing to let her tase any patrons that got too fresh if the bouncers couldn't get to them in time. 

 

Needless to say, Darcy took the job and successfully made her rent.


	2. Darcy Gets Hired

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who's left comments and kudos!
> 
> And special thanks to TheGreatSporkWielder, as always for being the best beta ever.

Darcy had been working in the club for three weeks when the owner, Clarence, pulled her aside. 

"Look, I know your break is coming up, but one of your conditions just walked in. Tony Stark's here with some big blond hunk. I put them in your section, center table."

She grinned and a thrill went through her. _Finally,_ she might be able to get some answers about Jane, Erik, and Thor. She just had to get Tony Stark to talk to her. According to anything she ever read, that shouldn't be too hard. She took three minutes to slip off to the bathroom and adjust her boobs, pulling them upwards in the costume until they swelled in just the correct way. She checked the lay of her double button shorts in the mirror and grinned before sashaying to Stark's table. She was pretty pleased with the way his blond friend's jaw dropped, and feeling more than a little flattered that Tony himself looked away from the floor show and moved his sunglasses lower on his nose to get a better look at her. She served them without comment on Tony's identity until her break. It was totally worth the wait to watch him first throw her suspicious looks, and then steadily get surlier and surlier when she didn't say anything about who he was. 

When the clock struck midnight she signaled for the other girls to cover her area and made her way back to their table. 

"Mind if I spend my break with you guys?"

The suspicious look on Stark's face returned, but the blond smiled like a golden retriever and Darcy felt a little blinded from the bright white of it in the dark club.

"Not at all!" 

He squished a little farther over into the rounded booth and gave her plenty of room to slide in across from Tony. Darcy considered how to open and then decided it was probably best to repair the damage she had done to Stark's ego first.

"So, you're the famous Tony Stark, Iron Man."

He looked at her over his sunglasses, and _seriously_ , sunglasses at midnight in a club? How douche-y could he try and make himself?

"That's me." 

He paused a moment considering her.

"Look if you're going to hit on me you have to know I'm officially taken and if you're looking for money for whatever reason you should come up with damn good one."

The blond made a sound of protest, but didn't actually say anything when they both turned to look at him.

"Nope, not money. Definitely not hitting on you." On a whim, she hoped Bruce would forgive her for using him and added, "I'm engaged."

"Oh, well congratulations, but really that hasn't stopped some of them before."

"It stops me."

"So what is it then? You're a reporter, staking out this club hoping Captain America would come in like the owners who are so desperately setting bait for him?"

The blond frowned in the corner of Darcy's eyes and something niggled at the back of her mind. Something she'd seen on the internet. She brushed it off for the moment and went back to her goal.

"No, though I would like to meet him. I'm actually bothering you on my break to ask about Jane Foster, Erik Selvig, and Thor. Neither Jane or Erik has messaged me since I left the country after finishing my internship with them."

Blondie's frown got deeper.

"How do you kno--"

Stark cut him off.

"There's no way you're a physicist."

For a moment Darcy was offended on the behalf of women everywhere.

"Because I have breasts and know how to apply my makeup?" 

This time is was Stark who rolled his eyes.

" _No_. Because you're too young to have a doctorate, and if you had a degree in physics, you would have been able to get a job in New York that didn't involve trying to seduce Captain America despite being engaged. I've slept with some physicists just as-" He made the hourglass shape with his hands in the air. "-as you."

"Fair enough, but you aren't answering my questions."

"Haven't heard you ask any."

She sighed. He was like five year old Jimmy Anderson that she used to babysit, except smarter. 

"Could you please tell me how Erik Selvig, Jane Foster, and Thor are as well as you know?"

"How do I know you're not some sort of spy?"

Darcy huffed exasperatedly.

"I'm a waitress at a brand new vintage strip club built to lure Captain America into debauchery. How am I any kind of spy? I didn't even know about the alien attack until a week after it happened!"

She cut her eyes sideways as Blondie turned bright red and choked on his drink. 

"My CPR certification ran out, but if you feel like you're not breathing well, I'd be glad to prove the skills don't go away even though the card says they do."

Tony snorted and Blondie just coughed, turning redder and shaking his head. Darcy totally caught the relieved look he shot Stark when the engineer took the conversation back.

" _A week_ , how the hell-"

Blondie glared and made a disapproving noise and Tony rolled his eyes again. She wondered if he'd ever gotten them stuck in the back of his head, as exaggerated as his eye roll was. 

"Excuse me. How the _fuck_ did you not find out until a week later?"

She had to hold back a snort at Blondie’s bitchface. 

"I was island hopping in the middle of the Pacific Ocean."

" _Why?_ "

Darcy sighed. She _really_ hadn't planned on discussing her crisis of self with Tony Stark.

"After the whole Norse gods are real and they travel by rainbow bridge thing in New Mexico I kind of figured my current life plan was shit and I needed to figure stuff out. I was in India and a guy I met recommended the islands."

To her surprise it was Blondie, not Tony that spoke next.

"And you figured out you wanted to waitress in a strip club?"

Darcy was caught off guard for just a second. She could admit that in her head. She totally wasn't expecting Blondie to be _that_ kind of guy, but the way he posed the question made her think he still wasn't. He seemed genuinely curious. It didn't make her feel like he was any less of an jerk.

"Whoa! He does speak! And sound like an asshole!"

His whole face turned redder than her lipstick from his ears to his neck and she almost felt sorry for her comment.

"I'm terribly sorry, ma'am, that wasn't what I meant--"

Darcy watched Tony take pity on his companion, patting his arm.

"You really do suck at this, don't you, Steve? No wonder Pepper thinks you're such a marvel. How did you and what's her name, your girl, ever get on?"

If anything, the man turned redder as his eyes looked into the distance and he muttered.

"She shot at me."

Darcy laughed loudly and patted the poor man's shoulder.

"It's alright. Apology accepted. This was just the only paying job I could get right now. A political science degree apparently means jack shit to a lot of people."

Somehow Steve still managed to frown at her language while nodding in understanding about the rest of her sentence. Tony, however, was scrubbing at his goatee and watching her with consideration. Darcy wondered if she was having the same feeling that ants under a magnifying glass did.

"Political science? That's people and words and stuff right? I need a new assistant."

She huffed.

"Yeah, people and words and stuff, but you _still_ haven't told me about Erik and Jane."

"Oh, right. Erik's fine. He's taking a sabbatical. Thor's brother pulled some nasty shit in his head, but he'll be okay. Um, Foster....Steve do you remember...?"

"Thor mentioned her. Fury had her put somewhere safe for the duration of the battle. I don't know anything else, but maybe Clint or Natasha...?"

Darcy shrugged. 

"As long as she's safe. That's all I needed to know."

She watched Steve sideways. Obviously he was in on the whole Avengers thing. Blond, muscles like a god, but not Asgardian; obviously she'd been sitting next to Captain America for the past ten minutes and had been oblivious. She was highly disappointed in herself for not figuring it out sooner. Oh well, she'd squeal in private when he wasn't likely to burst all the blood vessels in his face.

"So you were making me a job offer."

Tony nodded.

"I was indeed. You can even keep your job here if you like. That won't last long because I keep the craziest hours ever, but you're welcome to try."

"Nah, I get to keep the costume, and I'm betting you'll pay a lot better, so I'm not fussed about quitting."

"What about this mysterious fiancé of yours? Would he be bothered by you working for _the_ Tony Stark? I mean, I don’t care, but you might."

Darcy mulled over that in her head a moment. She probably didn't know Bruce well enough to make that judgment call, but even one night had showed her how into science Bruce was, and for all Stark's oddities and outrageous living, he was a man of science. There were those unspoken anger issues to consider, though. Darcy didn't know a thing about them. What if he was a jealous man? She grit her teeth and chastised herself for even beginning to think of planning her life based on a man, let alone one she would probably never see again and was only _conditionally_ engaged to, anyway. Shaking herself out of it, she went with the least weird sounding thing in her head.

"No...I think he'd be okay with it. You've got the science thing going on."

"Excellent. Show up tomorrow, maybe around two? Should be awake by then. Or asleep. I never know. If something's come up, JARVIS will show you around."

Darcy heard Clarence calling her from behind the bar and glanced at the clock on the wall. Her break was up.

"Great. See you soon."

Grinning, she leaned over and pecked Steve's cheek.

"Nice to meet you, Cap."

She walked away with only one glance over her shoulder to confirm Captain America's face matched her lipstick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo no Bruce in this one, but I promise they'll meet again in the next. :D

**Author's Note:**

> So Darcy and Bruce can't meet again quite yet, but they're getting closer together.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Dress for Success](https://archiveofourown.org/works/438885) by [Rokeon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rokeon/pseuds/Rokeon)




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